How do we select the hives that can defend against the varroa mites?
There
are several ways to select the hives that defend best against the mites -
you can see them in the study that made the beekeepers that have best experience
in this field:
http://www.lapalmamiel.com/a/study.pdf
We use the metod of freezing
a piece of tapped brood.
You have to cut a small piece, freeze it 24 hours and put it in the original
position.
Exactly 24 hours later we control the porcentage of cleaned cells.
If they have cleaned more than 90% in 24 hours it is most probably that they
can defend against the varroa
mites what
I am talking about in the section "how do they defend".
The bees open the tapped cells that have mites inside, the baldheaded brood.
The hive that best built the small cells was N° 10R.
It is marvellous how they work the small wax cells.
So we reared a lot of daughters of this queen and most of them work as good
as the mother hive.
In may 2006 we made a freezed brood test and it turned out very bad.
they cleaned very bad after 24 hours
In august of 2007 we made the same tests with the hives that have queen daughters of 10R.
These hives work the small cells perfectly - we had to struggle 6 years to get this result.
For this reason we maintained the hive 10R to breed queens however it did not do well in the test.
We also selected the strongest hives of these daughters of 10R.
The tests with hives 83b and 90b on12.8.07
the 83b
after 24 hours:
cleaned nearly everything
and the 90b
after 24 hours:
cleaned also nearly everything
Of the 9 hives that we selected for the test, all daughters of 10R, all cleaned more than 90%.
Some other hives, not daughters of 10R, showed problems in the test.
------------------------------
Other way to select is very simple -
live or die without treatment
The hive 8w, that I have infected intentionally with very very much mites in June of 2006
has cleaned the mites in autumn of 2006 as you can see here - bald headed brood:
and all through the year 2007 I could not find any mite in this hive.
I got 15 liters of honey in june from 8w and in august it has 3 supers, the third completely full of honey
and the second half honey half brood.
a brood frame of hive N° 8w on 10.8.07
and all this without ANY treatment
the hive N° 8w is another mother to breed our queens
